BONUS NUMBER 72: OSCAR WILDE IN PARIS

(Did You Sleep With the Models?)

Oscar Wilde’s final days…a haunting narrative told with compassion by Leigh W. Rutledge. The images that follow Leigh’s Mandate story are from his collection.

Oscar Wilde’s pseudonumous carte de visite during his exile in Paris. From the collection of Leigh W. Rutledge

This is the hotel where Oscar Wilde died. Now so exclusive that it’s called merely “L’Hôtel, Paris,” at 13 rue des Beaux-Arts, it was not always so fine. During Wilde’s stay it was a low-rent establishment called L’Hôtel d’Alsace.

A photograph of Oscar Wilde taken shortly after death by his mysterious companion Maurice Gilbert; and two views of his tomb in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Paris. Sculpted by Jacob Epstein, the tomb was vandalized in the 1960s and the testicles of the figure hammered off. At right, note the clear barricade installed in 2014 to prevent ongoing vandalism, graffiti, and the custom of kissing the tomb, which left the stone so badly stained that it required expensive cleaning. Lipstick prints cover the monument in the picture at left, before erection of the barricade.

A copy of Wilde’s final hotel bill, and a photograph of Robbie Ross, Wilde’s dear friend who was with him when he died. Wilde said that Ross was the first man he ever had sex with. Ross died in London in 1918; his ashes, as he had instructed, were interred in Wilde’s tomb at Père-Lachaise.

Vincent Price as Oscar Wilde in John Gay’s Diversions and Delights, at the Elitch Theatre, Denver, in 1979

Oscar Wilde claimed responsibility for the failure of this magnificent world’s fair.

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A note on the illustrator, Juan Suarez-Botas. He was born in Spain in 1958 and died

of AIDS in New York in 1992. I did not know him, but I’ve always admired the two illustrations he did for “Oscar Wilde in Paris.” This feature ran in November 1982, which means that I would have accepted it at least four month earlier and perhaps even before. I became editor-in-chief of the magazines in February of 1982, amid great chaos and confusion at the company. Someone other than I commissioned the illustrations. I speculate that it was John Devere, founding editor of the magazines. John stayed on through most of 1982 as consultant. He knew a number of gay men in show business and the visual arts; it’s therefore likely that Suarez-Botas was among them.

Here I quote from the Wikipedia entry on Suarez-Botas: “His illustrations appeared on the covers of Time, Fortune, U.S. News and World Report and other magazines. His drawings appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, and other publications.”

We were fortunate to have a contributor of his talents, and I regret that we did not try to use his work again and again.

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